Alison Roman - Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes

Copyright 2017 by Alison Roman

Photographs copyright 2017 by Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN9780451496997

Ebook ISBN9780451497000

Cover design by Elizabeth Spiridakis Olson

Cover photography by Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott

v4.1_r1

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For Jen, Finn, and Theo

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

When I was twenty, I told my mom I was going to take a break from college to cook food for a living. She gave me a special look, reserved only for mothers about to ask a question in a half cry, half yell: Youre going to quit school so that you can go work at Hot Dog on a Stick? Not exactly. It was, in fact, a really nice restaurant, James Beard award and all. No corn dogs, no hand-pressed lemonade. It wasnt that I didnt like school (I did), or that I wasnt good at it (I was!), but more just that I didnt feel anything for it, and I was really all about following my feelings at that time. Eleven years later, Im still on that break from college.

Over time, in and out of restaurant and editorial test kitchens, Ive cultivated my own personal cooking style, which is hard to classify. I wouldnt call it lazyI prefer the term lo-fibut to give you some insight into my life as a home cook, I dont own a blender, and up until a few months ago, I didnt even own a food processor (my love for good bread crumbs finally broke my resolve). I use the same stainless-steel skillet to cook nearly everything, a cast-iron one for everything else, and when I inevitably misplace my rolling pin, I take pleasure in rolling piecrust with an unopened wine bottle. The ingredients I keep in my kitchen are mostly familiar (herbs, lemon, olive oil, salt) with only a few that arent (yuzu kosho, lime pickle), but all have certainly earned their place among the chaos that is my kitchen cupboard. I prefer my steak seasoned with only salt and pepper and believe that my chipped, fire-orange Dutch oven scavenged at a flea market does the job of ten electric slow cookers.

The recipes in this book follow my general approach, in that I would never ask you to toast nine different hard-to-locate spices on a Monday after work, and Id never suggest you make something that takes 2 hours if there were a simpler and equally delicious way to do it in one. Ive been calling these recipes highly cookable, meaning theyre easy to shop for, simple to execute, and a joy to eat. They prove that casual doesnt have to mean boring and simple doesnt have to be uninspired and that more steps or ingredients dont always translate to a better plate of food.

In most cities its easy to eat every meal out at a wonderful restaurant if you want. From $1 plates of dumplings to $26 avocado salads, you can truly have it all. And dont get me wrong, I love the experience of eating out, being served, ordering things I would never cook or make myself, like roasted bone marrow on toast with a perfect martini or 36-hour ramen. But for everything else, I prefer dining in. Sure, theres the grocery shopping (a task I actually love), the chance that your oven will stop working halfway through roasting a chicken slathered with anchovy butter (finish it on the stove!), and yes, there are dishes to clean (that can wait until tomorrow). But for me, theres nothing more special or satisfying than cooking for your friends, family, lovers, or, perhaps most important, yourself. Maybe its because I have cultivated unrealistically high standards for my food tasting exactly as I would prepare it: pork chops almost too salty, salad almost too lemony, bacon so crispy most would call it burnt. Or maybe its that cooking, dining in, is truly a whole other experience from eating at a restaurant or ordering takeout. Your kitchen isnt meant to compete with the hottest restaurant in town, but there is no reason that the food cooked in your own home should be any less fabulous or bring you any less joy.

Here youll find a collection of recipes that are neither obnoxiously aspirational nor so obvious that youd wonder why you bought this book, but fall somewhere delightfully in the middle, full of advice that will help you to become a better cook along the way. These recipes are meant to inspire you to adapt, encourage you to riff, and empower you to maybe not follow the recipe. My hope is that youll use this book so much that youll never have to look at it again, cooking from it until each page is covered in olive oil and splattered with tomato, loving it until the pages fall out; the well-worn Velveteen Rabbit in your kitchen.

To buy a book and cook from it is an extremely personal experience. Youre trusting someone you dont know with your birthday dinner, your housewarming party, your date night, your desk lunch. Its really quite intimate, and I want you to know that we (this book and I) dont take this responsibility lightly. I promise that we will never ask you to make something in two skillets if it can be done in one. We will never ask you to buy an ingredient youve never heard of unless I can defend it with my life and tell you 20 other things to do with it. I promise that we will never require you to remove all the leaves off the parsley stem because that takes FOREVER and I think youll like the stem anyway. I promise that if you read this book, you will learn at least one thing that will make you a better and more independent cook for the rest of your life.

Table for one? Yes, please. Weekend dinner party? You got this. There is no occasion too big or too small to decide that tonight, youre dining in.

THE PANTRY

Try as I might, I am not the keeper of a well-organized kitchen. My ingredients are not stored in antique Ball jars, and theyre certainly not arranged alphabetically, by color, or even by size. A can or package of something spills out of my cabinet nearly every time I open it, and my Ikea metro shelf is bursting with half-filled plastic bags from the bulk bins at Whole Foods. Maybe one day all of this will change, but I dont count on it. I have no system, and that is my system.

Among the chaos are the things I cant imagine cooking without: the can of tomatoes hiding behind the bottle of apple cider vinegar, my box of flaky sea salt precariously perched on top of a very small jar of capers. These staples most influence my food; they are the ingredients that make me a better cook, organized or not.

The pantry list is not a mandate, but if you have most of these things, itll make cooking the recipes in this book much easier. I also respect that certain things arent for everyone. You might buy a tin of anchovies and write an angry letter asking me to refund your $8.99. Or they might change the way you make tomato sauce and roast a chicken, and youll heap mountains of praise onto me for suggesting you give them a try. Im hoping for the latter, but if not, you know where to find me.